


The Hunting of Man

by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth (nirejseki)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M, Vampire Hunters, Vampires, gratuitous innuendo, not everyone's life works out like the Winchester brothers, s3e5 inspired, slight reference to Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/robininthelabyrinth
Summary: If there's one rule a vampire hunter needs to keep, it's 'always be prepared'. Read up on what you can, keep a stake with you at all times, and never, never, let down your guard.Mick Rory is a hunter, born and bred, at least until his family dies in a fire, and his guard is...Well, to be honest, it's mostly down.





	The Hunting of Man

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this forever ago and forgot to post it - just a cute little ficlet inspired by Mick's vampire-hunting fervor in Return of the Mack...

If there's one rule a vampire hunter needs to keep, it's 'always be prepared'. Read up on what you can, keep a stake with you at all times, and never, never, let down your guard.

Mick Rory is a hunter, born and bred, at least until his family dies in a fire, and his guard is... 

Well, to be honest, it's mostly down. 

It's _hard_ keeping up with his training at foster homes, okay? There are people there, and they don't always understand. Especially the ones that think feeding the kids a slug of liquor is a great way to keep 'em quiet and placid, which certainly worked great when Mick was eleven but is pretty shit at fifteen.

Also, unlike the great hunters of the past, Mick's parents and grandparents and great-grandparents included, Mick's never actually - 

He's never -

_You know_.

Done the deed.

Scored a home run.

Crossed the finish line. 

Dipped his wick.

Gone _all the way_.

Yes, it's true.

Mick's never actually staked a vampire.

Not once.

That's - that's _embarrassing_ , is what it is. He's a _Rory_! It's in his bones - in his _blood_! His parents met over the moldering corpse of a master vampire while fighting off the army of ghouls he had collected to his service (the actual numbers involved were uncertain, and tended to grow in the retelling), having just succeeded in driving them back all alone, just the two of them, with flame and stake and silver, and that's how they knew they were meant to be. Mick's mother came from a respectable line of Hunters, less famous than the Rorys but even more well-known for its viciousness and ruthlessness. 

Really, it's no wonder they were targeted in a terrible act of retribution - an act which fell upon Mick's shoulders to avenge, with him being the overlooked single survivor of the massacre. That was practically a storybook opening, y'know? It meant Mick was destined for great things. A legendary career. 

A legend -

\- who had yet to stake a vampire.

Mick would _like_ to say that his failure to nail anyone was due to a deliberate stylistic choice - that could be respected. Oh, no, the vampires would murmur to themselves, not _Mick Rory_ , you know he doesn't use stakes, just the flame - he'll burn you where you stand, no matter who you are, you ought to be scared of him -

But it isn't like that. Oh, sure, Mick's an arsonist - it happens sometimes, when your childhood of flame and death results in an anxiety disorder manifesting in undertreated pyromania - but his record with vampires remains a big, fat, disgusting zero.

Zilch.

Nada.

The ol' null set.

Mick's a grown man, damnit! He's supposed to be _established_ by now. He's supposed to have nice homestead filled with the tools of his trade, like his parents had, where wandering hunters can stop and cool their heels for a while, learning tricks of the trade and picking up tips for their next big hunt. Or instead, given Mick's personal tragedy, it'd be understandable if he opted against settling down and just kept on carrying on, the endless wanderer on his tragic lonely path, leaving only ashes in his wake. 

But no.

He's got _nothing_.

Mick's parents would be ashamed of him if they knew.

And you know what's the worst part of it?

It's all Leonard _Goddamn_ Snart's fault.

Mick met him when he was young, actually. When Mick was young, mind you, not Len - Len was already a few hundred years old by then, a proper master vampire, fearsome and powerful.

Unfortunately, at the time, he’d just come out of a meeting with his asshole of a Sire, and that left him weak and confused and _absolutely awful_ at hand-to-hand fighting, which is why he was getting the shit kicked out of him when Mick came across him.

Mick was nominally in juvie at the time, on account of certain fires he liked to start, but they didn't really care too much about anything, so he'd been on a walk outside the grounds in the evening, patrolling for vampires. Yes, he knows that the mild-mannered suburbia he was currently incarcerated in isn’t exactly prime vampire territory, not unless you got really lucky and found yourself a Hellmouth or a summoning or something, but Mick was fifteen and optimistic and he had hope that he’d find _something_.

Instead, because he’s the unluckiest bastard alive, he found Len. 

Or rather, he saw Len getting his ass kicked, and he ran over and punched a few guys. It wasn’t about being a hero, honest; Mick’s just not had a lot of time to get into shape with actual fighting, since it was looked down on as a problem in juvie and they came down on you like a pile of bricks, and the foster homes hadn’t been great on it either. And Mick _likes_ fighting, it’s practically his favorite part of the whole hunter lifestyle. 

So, yeah. He went and rescued the poor bastard.

The poor bastard who sat up with his ridiculous cheekbones and his ridiculous eyes and his ridiculous face and smiles and said, “Hi,” like they’re going to be friends now.

“Hi,” Mick said back, because holy _crap_ Len was and is beautiful, unrealistically beautiful, and really, Mick should’ve known he was a vampire right off the bat because that level of pretty is just freaking unnatural, but at the time he was young and confused and a little turned on and all of his words and thoughts just flopped about like an unhelpful seal in his head, leaving him with nothing smart to say. 

“I owe you one,” Len said. 

Mick shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really,” Len said. “I’ll pay you back, one day. What’s your name?”

“Mick Rory,” Mick said, because he didn’t realize there was a reason not to. “And you should really learn to fight better.”

“My name’s Leonard Snart,” Len told him. “And I swear, I’m not normally this bad at this.”

“That’s what she said,” Mick said automatically.

Give him a break, okay? He was _fifteen_.

But because Len’s own sense of humor is pathetically juvenile, he apparently found it absolutely hilarious, and that’s how Mick ended up with his very own vampire stalker.

Oh, he didn't realize it at first, of course. Len's respectful, as he likes to put it, or whatever you call the calculation you make when you're immortal and meet someone you kinda think you might be interested in one day but they're so young it makes you feel all skeevy about it so you decide to wait until they're older to make their acquaintance again and see what you feel like then so that you don't feel like you're grooming them or anything. 

Okay, Mick gets why Len just sums that up under 'respectful'. It's a bit of a mouthful otherwise. 

Anyway, he didn't figure it out mostly because he was moved between foster homes and juvie and back for the next few years, and that ain't exactly conductive to noticing just about anything if you're trying to keep up a training schedule designed to help you fight things that go bump in the night. Either way, he doesn't think Len had much to do with any of the stuff that happened during that time of Mick's life; it was all normal stuff, and Len's had a hard enough life to have a pretty high standard of what normal stuff he expects a man ought to be able to deal with himself. 

Mind you, Mick's always been suspicious as to how quickly he got moved out of some of those foster homes, the ones that were real bad, but he's never been able to prove nothing. 

No, he didn't figure it out until he was _finally_ out on his own, twenty years old - two years later than most on account of a slight case of institutionalization - and finally, _finally_ able to take up his family profession. 

Except - and it's a pretty big except - except for the fact that he couldn't find any vampires.

He didn't think too much of it at first; vampires are moderately rare, after all, even the more common ghoul-like sort, and anyway it's best to cut your teeth (no pun intended) on some regular run-of-the-mill spooks first. 

Which he does! He's great at spooks and ghosties and stuff like that, and he even takes out a rabid chupacabra or two, no sweat.

Still, the Rorys are a vampire hunter family, not a run-of-the-mill supernatural hunter, and after the first few months he decides he's done enough to practice and it's time to go after the Real Thing.

But after nearly a year of serious searching he's starting to wonder if he's gotten something wrong. 

He doesn't _think_ it's anything he's been doing - he's following all the signs his ma and pa taught him, tracking and hunting and everything, but he can't find the damn buggers. He finds nests, hastily emptied; he finds coffins left behind; he even at some places finds piles of ash that indicate that while yes, there was definitely a vampire here at one point in time, that vampire ain't causing any more problems ever again. 

No live ones, though. Un-live ones? Undead ones? Whatever. No vamps for Mick to pop his staking cherry on, that's what he means.

It's getting plain old embarrassing, not that twenty-one year old Mick even began to know the meaning of the term compared to what was to come, and so Mick decided that what he clearly needed was some help and he apprenticed himself off to some fellow hunters he met at a roadside bar. 

They were good people - a nice little triad, pair of brothers and a buddy of theirs - and sympathetic to Mick's tale of woe, their own mother (girlfriend? both?) having died in a fire as well, real traumatic stuff, so they let him tag along, telling him he was sure to get some experience with them. 

They found spooks and spirits and other supernatural things that go bump in the night - kiddy stuff, the lot of it - but no vampires. Not even a werewolf or a lamia or anything even _slightly_ resembling a proper blood-sucker! Not even a proper ghoul minion!

Mick started worrying that his failure up until now is not just that he's inexperienced. 

No.

He's a goddamn Jonah for vampire hunting.

"Nah, this is weird," one of the brothers assures him. "Seriously weird. Even if they run away before we get there, they usually leave a few ghouls to ambush us and distract us to give them a chance to get further away, but we haven't found anything at all. Something is _definitely_ up. And I've got an idea."

That idea involved the brothers splitting up, one going with Mick after one vampire nest and the other going with his friend after another one.

The one Mick was with found nothing, as usual, but then they got the call they'd been hoping for and drive like crazy to get to where Team Two was reporting success.

Well, partial success. The vampires had cleared out because they'd heard the brothers were coming, but as they had predicted, a few ghouls were left behind, and they'd managed to keep one alive (undead) to answer a few questions.

It's Mick's first time seeing a ghoul. Not even a real vampire, but at least it's something vampire-adjacent, at least.

It's also, according to the brothers, the first time a ghoul has literally shrieked in terror upon seeing someone.

Seeing Mick, that is.

"What the _fuck_ ," Mick says. 

"Seriously, dude?" one of the brothers says irritably. "Him? You're scared of him? Do you even know who we are?"

"I don't want to draw His attention," the ghoul squeaks. It's hiding behind one of the brothers, now, which is just pathetic, given that the brothers are, in fact, pretty well-known hunters.

"His?" the buddy asks, sounding curious in that understated monotone way that he had. "Wait, a master vampire? What does that have to do with Mick?"

"There's a blood-bounty on his head," the ghoul says. "A real one, not one of those fake minor ones everyone calls blood-bounties. Except instead of asking anyone who sees him to kill him, like the minor ones you lot've got, it lays out the punishment that'll be enacted on anyone who attacks him - anyone who's even seen _near_ him -"

The ghoul suddenly turns and makes a break for it.

"Wait," one of the brothers says, not moving to follow. "Where do you think you're going? It's already -"

The ghoul goes through the door and disappears.

"- daytime," he finishes with a sigh. 

And, well, you can't exactly question a pile of ashes. 

They're very apologetic, after that. A blood-bounty's a tough problem to deal with, after all, and apparently the one on Mick's head is more threatening than the minor, casual ones on their own, which aren't exactly all that minor and casual as these things go, and, well - in the end, they're hunters. They've gotta be free to hunt. 

So Mick ends up alone again. 

The only words of comfort they can give him is that if he kills the master vampire that set the bounty, then maybe - _maybe_ \- it'll be lifted. 

Not necessarily, unfortunately. Real blood-bounties mean that the entire vampiric clan is obligated to get involved in avenging them. Honestly, the real thing is extremely rare nowadays; they’re almost unheard of, almost exclusively used to start wars and feuds that continue for centuries, and no one Mick can find has ever heard of it being used to keep vampires _away_ from someone. 

But finding and killing the master vampire's the only hope Mick’s got of finally having the normal, run-of-the-mill vampire hunter lifestyle he's always wanted. 

Now, master vampires are powerful creatures that excel in the act of getting even more powerful, which is what makes 'em so dangerous, and there's no way Mick can take one out on his own given his level of experience. Or lack thereof, as the case might be. 

But damn if he isn't going to try and at least find the bastard interfering with his affairs.

So he hunts and he hunts and he uses every last damn skill his parents ever taught him and it's not until he literally gets into a fistfight with a semi-rabid werewolf that said asshole decides it's time to intervene personally.

"You could've just called, you know," Len sniffs. 

"You!" Mick exclaims. 

"I did give you my name," Len complains. "Last name and everything, and I _hate_ my last name."

" _You?!_ "

"I mean, I ain't in the phone book or nothing, but the criminal underworld's a surprisingly friendly, neighborly type place when you really think about it -"

" _You're_ the one that's been messing with me?!"

"Rather the opposite, I'd think," Len says. "Anyway, I was planning on waiting another year or two, till you were older, but you being so excitable about finding me and all, I guess I'll make an exception. Consider yourself lucky."

"Lucky?!" Mick howls.

"I usually don't take partners as young as you," Len explains. "I'm being very nice."

That marks the first time Mick's tried to strangle Len, but it’s very, very far from the last.

Len is _such_ a pain in the goddamn ass.

What’s worse, he actually did think he was being nice about it, when in fact he was mostly just being _dumb as bricks_ instead. 

“You swore a blood bounty on me because I saved you from getting beaten up? A real freaking _blood bounty_?!” Mick shouts at him after Len’s taken him back to his lair, to which Mick only agreed to go because it’d give him another shot at strangling the guy, since his one half-hearted attempt at staking went straight through when Len turned into mist the way master vampires do when they’re being irritating dicks. Later on, he'd be begrudgingly impressed that Len's already picked up the mist trick when he's only a few hundred years old, far short of the thousand most master vampires are when they figure it out, but right now he's way too angry to care. “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

“I wanted to keep you alive until I had a chance to see you again,” Len protests.

“A _blood bounty_?!”

“…yeah?”

“What the _fuck_?!”

“I don’t know why you’re being so goddamn persnickity about the exact means I chose to exercise here.”

“Persnick- no, I’m not getting distracted right now. You seriously swore the service of your _entire clan_ to protect me just to keep me alive a little longer? Because I rescued you from the world's dumbest fucking mugging?”

Len blinks, long and slow. “Well,” he says.

Mick crosses his arms and glares. “How did you even get away with that?! Didn’t the others object?”

“About that clan business,” Len says.

“What?!”

“The only kin I recognize is me and my sister,” Len says. “So, you know, the whole clan thing? It, uh, it ain’t really that much of a threat as all that. You're blowing it way out of proportion here.”

Mick’s eye twitches. “Your vampiric clan is everyone who shares blood with you,” he says through gritted teeth. “It don’t matter who you _recognize_ as kin. You telling me you put a blood bounty on my head and _you didn’t even realize what you were doing_?!”

Len considers this, and shrugs.

“How many times have you done this?!” Mick howls, absolutely _offended_. If anything, this is even worse than he was expecting, and he was expecting to get skewered within five seconds of meeting the bastard. “We met for five minutes!”

“More like ten.”

“ _Not the point_.”

“You’d know all about points, Mr. Vampire Hunter,” Len says. “You’re the one who always carries a stake around.”

“I’ll give you a goddamn _point_ –”

“See, this is why I like you,” Len says encouragingly. “Most people would’ve told me to go to hell for that pun.”

“Do you even understand that I’m angry with you?!”

“You’ll get over it.”

“I will do _no such thing_ , you fucking bastards.” Mick pauses, though, and considers. “Did the others you did this to get over it?”

“Oh, there weren’t any others,” Len says airily. “I’m very picky, you know.”

Mick’s eye twitches again.

“I’ve actually gotten congratulated by some of the other vampires, you know,” he confides. “They were starting to worry that I’d end up all alone for eternity and just makes people weird. Going all Nosferatu bat-face-is-a-lifestyle-choice, hiding in dank old castles, talking about bringing about the apocalypse, that sort of shit; I keep telling 'em there's no risk - I'm not that old! - but nooooo, it's all 'have you considered siring' and 'fledgings ain't as bad as all that' and 'you can't actually limit the number of people you like to your sister'. Bunch of meddling nosy assholes, y’know? But what can you do, right? Vampire society - can't live with it, can't live without - no, really, we could live without it, we'd all be happier without it, but apparently vampire-on-vampire crime is so passé nowadays -”

Oh yeah. Definite eye-twitching going on here. 

“But anyway, that's over with. Now you’re here, and we can get started!” 

“Started?” Mick asks, suddenly suspicious. “With _what_?”

The answer, it turned out, was crime. 

Not just crime.

_Petty crime_.

“You’re a _master vampire_ ,” Mick moans, slamming his forehead into the table filled with blueprints. “Are you seriously planning on robbing an ATM?”

“I need the seed money from the ATM to set up the things I need for the bigger heist at the bank,” Len says. “Don’t knock ATMs; they’re great for that.” Then he smiles. “Actually, _do_ knock ATMs; that’s kind of the _point_ –”

“Oh my god.”

“Now, I’ve been assuming that you’d do great as our muscleman, but if you’d prefer another role – getaway driver, explosives, whatever – now’s the time to speak up. We can always train you up, whichever way you'd like, so don't worry about that. Whatever skills you have will do. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a reliable partner!”

Mick’s head is on the table. 

He’s got a blood-bounty on his head that keeps vampires away from him, rendering him unfit to practice the profession he was raised into. 

What little money he had from travelling with the brothers is all but gone now. 

He’s in the presence of a batshit crazy master vampire who seems to be fond of him for reasons Mick can’t even begin to understand, but also appears to not actually be a threat to anyone.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Mick says, face still smushed down onto the table. “Being the muscle’s fine.”

At any rate, it works out. Turns out that Len’s absolutely brilliant – about crime, at least – but he’s oblivious to undercurrents and doesn’t always understand people, which Mick can handle, and also he doesn’t exactly look all that intimidating which means Mick gets to play the big dumb bruiser character, letting him menace those who needed menacing and eavesdrop on those that thought he was too stupid to realize what they were up to. He cuts off problems before they start, that way, because obviously if someone actually tried something Len would have to kill them, and Mick's a vampire hunter; he can't be sitting around letting vampires kill humans.

No matter how much they might deserve it.

Also, Mick’s really good at heading off Len’s – well, Len-ish-ness – before it escalates. It’s not just vampire stuff, like Len very nearly forgetting that it’s _daylight_ outside and needing to be forcefully put to bed – yes, bed, since he prefers a nice indoor room to a coffin – or the occasional mania for counting things that he needs to be distracted from or else he’ll be stuck in a rut. Sometimes it’s just Len stuff, like insisting that he doesn’t need to eat human food (he does), or claiming that vegetables are poison (his flesh, while vampiric, still requires the vitamins), or talking for three hours straight even when no one is listening anymore...

Listen, as far as Mick was concerned, he was going to agree to do one job together, get some money, and use the time to try to convince Len to call off the blood-bounty. He has no idea how it came to pass that they’d been together for months and months and actually even years and suddenly Len is attempting to get him anniversary presents and Mick needs to sit down and think about his life choices and how they lead him to this place.

This place, where he, Mick Rory of the Rory family, vampire hunters all, is partners in crime with a vampire.

The worst of it, though? 

Len was _right_. 

They actually make great partners. 

("I'm willing to do the marriage shit," Mick announces later that night. "But the first person to call me your Bride is getting a stick of dynamite up the ass."

"Yeah, sounds fair," Len says. "You wanna order a big cake? What flavor?"

"You're being very low-key about me accepting your marriage proposal."

"Realistically, everyone I know thinks that it already happened _years_ ago, so..."

"Ugh. Fine. And make it triple-chocolate-hazelnut."

"Are you sure I can't convince you to make it red velvet?"

"What, and open the door for you to make blood puns?"

"Yes."

"....fine."

"Thanks, Mick. You're the best partner ever. I have _such_ good taste."

"Oh, fuck off or I'll stake you."

"You can stake me _all_ you like this evening. I'll even put away the plans early, given that we're celebrating."

"Not what I _meant_ , you - you know what? Forget it.")


End file.
